What Dolphins could learn from Don Shula

By Bill Curry

Updated 10:13 AM ET, Fri February 21, 2014

Photos: Richie Incognito12 photos

Richie Incognito – The Miami Dolphins have suspended Pro Bowl offensive lineman Richie Incognito following allegations of misconduct from teammate Jonathan Martin. Incognito played for the University of Nebraska before he was drafted in 2005 by the St. Louis Rams. He also played for the Buffalo Bills in 2009 before joining the Dolphins in 2010.

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Photos: Richie Incognito12 photos

Richie Incognito – Incognito walks to the field from the locker room during a Buffalo Bills game in December 2009.

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Photos: Richie Incognito12 photos

Richie Incognito – Incognito, seen here playing for the Rams in December 2006, was suspended by the Dolphins for detrimental conduct. ESPN, NFL.com and other media outlets reported that Martin's representatives submitted voicemails to the league and to the Dolphins containing racial slurs from Incognito and threats of physical violence. Martin left the Dolphins in the middle of the season.

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Richie Incognito – Incognito stands on the sidelines during a Rams preseason game in August 2008. Several media outlets said Martin had left the Dolphins because of bullying, something Incognito denied on Twitter."Shame on you for attaching my name to false speculation," one of the tweets said, according to Bleacher Report. That tweet and others addressed to various media outlets were deleted later.

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Richie Incognito – The Rams released Incognito in December 2009 after an argument during a game with then-head coach Steve Spagnuolo.

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Richie Incognito – Incognito stretches during the last day of Dolphins minicamp in June 2010.

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Richie Incognito – The Sporting News takes a yearly poll of NFL players, and in 2009 they dubbed Incognito the dirtiest player in the league.

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Richie Incognito – Incognito arrives on the red carpet for ESPN The Magazine's NEXT Party in February 2011.

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Richie Incognito – Incognito "was really kind of a big teddy bear off the field," said Chris Draft, who played with Incognito when both were with the Rams in 2007 and 2008. "My wife actually loved him."

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Richie Incognito – Incognito is introduced during a Dolphins game in September 2012.

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Richie Incognito – Incognito and Martin talk on the sideline during the second half of a preseason game August 24.

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Richie Incognito – Incognito played in his first Pro Bowl in January.

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Story highlights

Bill Curry: Vince Lombardi wouldn't tolerate racism in locker room; culture set at the top

Dolphins fired coach and trainer after bullying report; he says it shouldn't have come to this

He says football is violent, intense, needs leaders to set firm standards for alpha males

A great football team combines inherent violence with a certain order, always imposed by the coaches and team leaders. Famed Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi allowed very little humor and made it abundantly clear that there would be no racism in his organization. Regardless of intent, any racist remark by a player was deemed malicious and resulted in instant dismissal from the team. The culture was established at the top. Leaders like Willie Davis were the enforcers in the locker room, along with Lombardi's "War Council," a group of hand-picked players who communicated directly with him.

And now the heat has reached the top floor: The firings apparently came at the behest of team owner Steve Ross, who, news reports said, conducted his own investigation into the treatment of Jonathan Martin by fellow player Richie Incognito and others -- and the role their teammates, coaches and front office have played in the Dolphins' locker room culture.

Bill Curry

That's significant, since owners normally leave such issues to coaches.

The Dolphins melodrama is a sad story of too much smart-ass talk and not enough supervision. The team's leadership should have laid down specific guidelines regarding acceptable discussion of race and gender preference and about outright harassment. This was clear from the beginning. The team has suffered, and from the trainer to the owner, everyone -- literally everyone -- is affected. It should have never gotten this far.

Whether Ross' firm action this week is sufficient to restore order to the Dolphins is open to question, since players have weighed in on both sides. Someone should have shut the guys' mouths on day one. Normally, that would come from within the team and coaches.

I have a long view on this culture. Last fall marked the first season in 58 years that I was not employed full-time in a football job. Fourteen of those years were spent in the NFL -- 10 as a player (including with Lombardi's Green Bay Packers) -- and I wake up each morning with painful reminders. They seem a small price to pay for having competed in the greatest team sport ever devised.

With all the sometimes absurd chatter over the Dolphins' story, it must be difficult for thinking people to know or understand how the team's situation could have developed.

Maybe I can add perspective -- to explain, if not to completely excuse.

Football is the only sport in which every player needs every teammate on every play just to survive. Simply put, everybody matters.

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Football locker rooms are loaded with alpha males, and daily conflicts are inevitable.

My sensitive, scholarly friend, writer George Plimpton, joined us with the Baltimore Colts when we were Super Bowl champions and actually played four plays against Detroit in Ann Arbor before 104,000 fans. As we left the field, he turned to me and said, "That is the most disgusting experience in my life! You guys are deranged! I have never felt such palpable hatred in my life!" I said "That was not hatred; it was intensity. We are competitors!" He was inconsolable, and our argument continued until he decided we should do a book about the subject ("One More July").

Here are the fundamental and immutable truths that escape many media analysts and others:

• When you watch an NFL game, you are observing angry young men smashing each other with all their might on every snap of the ball. And each generation of players is bigger, faster and stronger than the one before.

• Football is not a contact sport. It is a collision sport. That is the essence -- indeed, the whole point -- of the game.

• College football is a petting zoo. The NFL is a jungle. When players cross the white lines in the NFL, they take on the persona of the gladiator. The intent is to destroy the opponent's will, to dominate him, to beat him into submission. There are no nice guys on game day.

• Some players can exit the field and resume life as decent human beings: kind, reverent and socially aware. Some cannot. Their unresolved anger issues are too dominant and manifest in often dangerous ways. For these players and former players, there is no equivalent in civilian life to the catharsis of two hours a day of physical combat.

• The onlypeople who understand a specific locker room are those who lived or live there.

When I moved to Don Shula's team in Baltimore, for example, I was surprised to learn that there was much more laughter than in my previous locker room. The team motto was "If you can't take a joke, bleep you!" Only we didn't say "bleep."

Everyone was fair game, especially superstars like John Unitas. The great John Mackey literally stripped his britches off down to jock once, in the middle of practice with several hundred spectators, because Tom Matte had planted a cicada in his pants. Everyone laughed, including Mackey. Shula smiled but quickly restored order, reminding us that we had better execute if we wanted the fun to continue.

If practice deteriorated, Shula stuck that jaw out, and our safety valve, Dan "Sully" Sullivan, would say, "Cut the crap. He's not smiling." I really feel that Shula's phenomenal record was due in part to his ability to allow for some nonsense from time to time and because we had people like Sully, who became his surrogates in the huddle.

There was only one Lombardi, and there is a reason the Super Bowl trophy bears his name. There will never be another Shula.

Every organization must have its own ethos and standards that are hammered into the men's consciousness every day as the team's complex mix changes with waivers, injuries and trades.

Players often feel that they are fighting for their lives. There must be constant reminders of the focus. When the team wins, everybody benefits.

Individual players with differences should be expected to take care of business in private or on the field -- like the men they claim to be.